A letter from the MD of Bmibaby in response to the BBC Watchdog programme that highlighted unstandardised luggage measurement cases has been published on the bmibaby website.

The programme covered businessman Kiran Somaiya, who complained after being charged £60 for having hand luggage too large to fit the measurement cages, only to find it fit perfectly in another cage.

In the letter, the MD said that the programme made Bmibaby look like they were trying to get extra money out of passengers deliberately, which he categorically denies.

He explained the situation as follows: “There are no baggage gauges being used by bmibaby that are smaller than the published dimensions of 55x40x20cm. None anywhere. So any customer bringing a bag of maximum dimensions of 55x40x20cm would be able to fit the bag in our gauges. The gauges are designed in a way which removes sharp edges by having a slight curve at the ‘top’ (and the ‘top’ will vary depending on whether the gauge is of horizontal design or vertical design). The one nuance that has emerged from this investigation is that a hard box of exactly these dimensions may not fit some gauges because the curve prevents the corner from fitting within the gauge. And that is a fair point. However this has never been an issue until now, as the vast majority of passengers do not carry hard edged square boxes of these exact dimensions, but instead carry normal cabin baggage.”

Bmibaby is now looking to replace all its gauges with a version that will rectify the problem/anomaly of the curved corners on some designs.